I was at the HDTVTest shootout. Here are my 2 sets of impressions:
Results:
Best overall TV: Panasonic FZ802 OLED
Best HDR TV: LG C8 OLED
Best gaming TV: Samsung Q9FN QLED
Best living room TV: Sony AF8 OLED
Best home theater TV: Panasonic FZ802 OLED
My notes:
Samsung: Black, near black and uniformity performance is awful when next to the oled's. Great sets for gaming. Sweet spot is very narrow with major PQ deg. off axis. This set had a major dse issue making it not viable for purchase.
LG. Great all around but not masterful at anything. Still the price to performance leader. Opposite of Sony for strengths and weaknesses.
Sony: Great SDR, upscales the best, best gradation. HDR lacks punch significantly when compared to ref monitors and other oleds.
Panasonic: by far the best colors and closest to ref monitors there. Combine LG's HDR with Sony's video processing and you a Panasonic. Came at the expense of black crush.
Overall: all the oleds were quite close with nitpicking and individual use cases being the decider. Outside of hdr brightness, the Q9 falls well behind. The LCD tech, outside of a major breakthrough is going to struggle.
Another great event ran by Vincent and company!
Part 2:
Adding more thoughts from the shootout:
- It's important to note that the difference in scoring between the top 2 were often a low as three place beyond the decimal point! These sets are really close and one of the challenges Vincent had was actually finding content that would highlight the differences between the OLED's. Even then you had to have an eye. No detail was given on what to look for specifically in the content so it was purely your ability and sensitivity to issues that determined your score.
- Tyler form Calman (most familiar brand) mentioned that gaming studios they have worked with are becoming focused on following standards and mastering their games to hollywood like standards while respective artistic intentions. So it's no longer about gaming PQ taking a back seat to latency. TV manufacturers will have to step up and provide low latency along with good adjustability in gaming mode. That's great news all around
- There were a total of 4 calibrators there. Vincent from HDTVTest. Tyler and his coworker from Calman and the main guy (and highly respected) from HDTV Poland. If I missed anyone, please jump in and correct me. This means you had multiple perspectives which is important
- All sets had 100+ hours on them before calibration
- There is a sense of depth and saturation to the picture that OLED's seem to have natively that the Q9F and even last year, the Z9D simply couldn't touch. The perceived depth and saturation is likely due to each pixel being a black canvas that the color is extruding from thus giving it natural richness. I'm not sure if this shows up in measurements but side by side, it's clear as can be
- Having the Sony mastering monitors is a huge plus and we had 2 this time allowing each set to be adjacently compared to the Sony RGB oled monitor. This takes all the guess work and "what if" out of the equation. You simply look at the picture as it's intended and then determine how close each sets comes. Simple but powerful.
- I brought up the point about color volume and this led to a good discussion. Vincent stated that he found such little value in this parameter that he's stopped measuring it as part of his review process. Other professionals didn't protest this finding either. One of the calman guys mentioned a specific scene in a movie where's a clown's nose fell outside of the working range of the color gamut and in that particular instance, you could see a difference.
- We also had a good discussion about the future of LCD. Vincent stated that they can keep upping the brightness and adding more zones but the problem, as @
rogo has mentioned here for years, is the cost to manufacture. The more LCD's try to match OLED's on quality, while the OLED's continue to drop in price rapidly, the harder it becomes from an economics standpoint to stay in the fight
- Tyler mentioned a new LCD mastering panel out by Panasonic (could be wrong on the brand) that is 2 LCD's packed together. The 1st LCD acts as the light control and the 2nd LCD is there for color. This allows the 1st LCD to control the light at a per pixel level. Currently 20k for 30 inches if you're wondering about feasibility. Hopefully we get to see one next year at the shootout. I believe it was limited to 1000nits and some issue with off axis along with cross talk due to the panel sandwich approach.
One of the best things for me attending these shootouts is the candid conversation that takes place. With the fury of the internet ready to cast judgement for every word you speak it's hard for these guys to be more open in the public square. Yet in an intimate setting and being surrounded by a group of enthusiasts who simply want to learn and observe, it creates great conversation and I learn more from one of these events than months of filtering through months of internet half truths and "read between the lines" type of messaging.
